The Death of the Saints: Responding to Present Day Persecution

CNN called the last 7 days “Religion’s Week from Hell.” Click the image to read the story.

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful servants. Psalm 116:15 NIV

Most of you realize that I don’t do topical articles here. Rather, I try to keep each post somewhat timeless so that people can go back and reuse the resources here at any time.

Sometimes however, events just overwhelm us. I can’t imagine that I would have simply kept writing and posting Bible studies after September 11th, 2001; and with videos circulating of Middle East Christians being beheaded it’s very difficult not to be overwhelmed.

Our purpose here at Christianity 201 is to help people build their doctrinal foundation and link to similar online sites to find more of the same. But as a “201 Christian” who is moving beyond the basics, we have to realize that there are times we need to simply stop the Bible study, forget the Sunday order-of-service, and cry out to God. Rather, we need to use these occasions to express our anguish and pain at seeing brothers and sisters so brutally cut down.

On an Instagram posting of the picture at right — a graphic image of a type unusual for this site — Ann Voskamp quoted two important scriptures.

…whatever the world news may say about the Brave, Martyred 21 Christians who were beheaded by ISIS, Lord, we know Your Word speaks the Truth: “The world was not worthy of them.” (Heb.11:38)

However any evil thinks it’s winning & overcoming,

Your Truth declares that they are the Overcomers, that they overcame “because of the blood of the Lamb & because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” (Rev.12:11)

And wherever Your people are tonight, God,

We will remember every one of their names because they did not forget You or forsake claiming Your name,

We will pray for their families because they are our literal family,

And we will pray that our faith in You
is worth laying down our life for You,

We will pray that we don’t live lives of cheap grace but costly Christianity,

We will pray that their sacrificed lives will stir us to live sacrificial lives

And we will weep prayers for the persecuted Church because we are bound to them through Your Heart & in Your heart they are UNBOUND, UNDEFEATABLE, UNDAUNTED, & UNFORGETTABLE.

James 1:22 says Do not deceive yourselves by just listening to his word; instead, put it into practice. (GNT)

The Message Bible records this as:

^22-24 Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

Part of our doing is communicating with God, expressing our sadness, crying out to him for help, interceding on behalf of the persecuted church. Yes, it is possible that God sees their sacrifice differently than we do, but we have only these eyes and ears, and what we see breaks us.

We need to tell God that.

^{AMP Rom 8:26}   So too the [Holy] Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance.

^{Message Rom 8:26} Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.

If the news about such modern day martyrdom has touched you — and I do not know how it cannot — I leave some space here that, rather than absorbing teaching and learning today, we would just express our pain to our Father in heaven.